Tyler Cross consumed enough alcohol to elevate his blood
alcohol content to more than twice the legal limit on the night he fell from a
fifth-floor balcony at the University Towers dormitory, according to a
toxicology report released this week by the Travis County Medical Examiner's
Office.

Cross, an 18-year-old mechanical engineering freshman, died from "blunt force
injuries" due to the accidental fall on Nov. 17, according to his autopsy
report. In addition to an array of fractures, abrasions and contusions, Cross
had a blood alcohol content of 0.19, which far surpasses the prescribed legal
limit of 0.08.

The examiner's office has withheld the report in conjunction with an ongoing
Austin Police Department investigation. In a January letter, the Texas Attorney
General's Office ruled that publicly releasing Cross' toxicology and autopsy
report to The Daily Texan would harm police scrutiny of the incident.

An APD spokesman said the department has not concluded its investigation. He
declined to comment on whether progress has been made in getting fraternity
members to open up about Cross' final hours.

Cross, an Atlanta native, was a pledge in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and
a member of the UT Lacrosse Club.

Caroline Beck, a spokeswoman for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, said
its investigation has been open since Cross died. She said the police department
and TABC have been examining different areas of the case.

"APD is looking at what happened," she said. "We're looking at where the alcohol
came from."

The commission has not interfered with APD's's work, as the charges that result
from that investigation could be more serious, Beck said.

"It picks up somewhat now that we have proof alcohol was involved," she said.

Another 18-year-old freshman pledge, Phanta "Jack" Phoummarath, was found dead
in the Lambda Phi Epsilon house on Dec. 10, 2005. Phoummarath died with a blood
alcohol content of .41, more than five times the legal limit, according to his
toxicology report.

The medical examiner's office released Phoummarath's toxicology and autopsy
results in January, more than a year after his death.

Jason Leonard, a St. Edward's University student, also died from a drug and
alcohol overdose last August in a friend's West Campus apartment.

University of Texas-Austin freshman Tyler Cross fell to his
death from his fifth-floor dorm room Friday morning.

The shock of Cross' death continues to resound from
Marietta to Austin, where he attended college to be near his older brother.

"The last four months have been the closest we've ever been," said Colin Cross,
a senior at Texas. "I thank God for giving us that short amount of time to
reconnect."

The night before his death, Tyler was "as happy as I've ever seen him," Colin
Cross said. "When he left the [fraternity] house we were high-fiving."

Tyler Cross had just been chosen one of the future leaders of his fraternity,
Sigma Phi Epsilon
Sigma Alpha Epsilon. He and his fellow freshman pledges were finishing up
work on decorations for a theme party that would mark their initiation as
brothers.

Colin Cross said he last saw his brother around 1 a.m. Friday, about three hours
before his death. Before dawn, he was notified by local police, who took him to
identify the body.

Their mother, Debbie Cross, said she's been consoled by the outpouring from her
son's friends. His roommates told her that, the night after his death, 500
students gathered for a vigil in front of the University Towers dorm where he
lived, just west of campus.

"We've already had seven of his fraternity brothers fly here [to Georgia],
including the president, just to tell us how much Tyler touched everyone he
met," Debbie Cross said. An additional 120 students have chartered a jet to
attend today's funeral at Mount Bethel United Methodist Church in east Cobb
County, she said.

Prosecutors are investigating a Texas fraternity after an
18-year-old pledge from Cobb County fell to his death last fall.

Tyler Cross of Marietta died Nov. 17 after falling five
stories from an apartment balcony. He was a freshman at the University of Texas
at Austin.

Travis County Attorney David Escamilla said his office,
which prosecutes misdemeanors, wants to know if hazing occurred at the Sigma
Alpha Epsilon fraternity, where Cross was a pledge.

“Whenever there is a death … we look at the entire
initiation process,” he said.

Dr. David Dolinak, the Travis County medical examiner, said
an autopsy revealed that Cross had a blood alcohol level of 0.19, more than
twice the legal limit for driving in Texas.

Debra Cross, his mother, said her son was “a great kid.”

She said friends and family have pledged money for a
landscaped entry way leading to the lacrosse field at the Lovett School — Tyler
played lacrosse at Lovett. People have also pledged money for a scholarship in
his name at UT Austin, she said.

10:16 AM CST on Tuesday, March 6, 2007

There is new information regarding the death of an
18-year-old UT student who fell from a fifth floor balcony at the University
Towers last fall.

A toxicology report for Tyler Cross shows the UT freshman
died from an accidental fall, but it also says his blood alcohol content was
well over the legal limit.

Cross’ autopsy results show that he had a blood alcohol
content of .19, more than twice the legal limit when he fell from his fifth
story balcony. Now, the TABC wants to know where the 18-year-old got the
alcohol.

Cross is described as a talented player on the lacrosse
team for UT. The Georgia native was pledging the Sigma Alpha Epsilon
fraternity when he died last November. A person walking their dog at 5
a.m. in the morning found the freshman’s body.

While Austin police continue to investigate the
circumstances leading up to Cross’ death, the TABC wants to know where the
18-year-old was able to get alcohol.

“Our role is to basically find the source of the alcoholic
beverages, and to determine whether or not they were obtained from a licensed
premise which sells alcoholic beverages, or from someone that was 21 or over
that made it available to that minor,” said Robert Saenz, with TABC.

Cross is now the third student to die in West Campus in an
alcohol-related death in little more than a year’s time. In December 2005,
18-year-old Phanta Jack Phoummarath was found dead of acute alcohol poisoning at
a fraternity house. Then in August 2006, a St. Edwards University student,
19-year-old James Leonard, died at a party from a mixture of drugs and alcohol.
His friend was charged with providing alcohol to a minor.

In this latest case, detectives want to talk to witnesses
who may have seen Cross before he fell to his death.

“You try to look for receipts. Witnesses are always
very key in our investigations,” said Saenz. “A lot of times, they're very
difficult to come by, but witnesses are always very, very important to us.
They're able to provide clues or facts for us about what happened or transpired
that evening, to where we got to the point that there was a death or an accident
or serious bodily injury.”

Cross’ roommates and some of his pledge brothers are
cooperating with police.

Providing alcohol
to a minor is a class A misdemeanor that could mean up to a year in jail

New information surfaced Thursday concerning the death of a
University of Texas student last year.

KVUE

Tyler Cross

The Travis County District Attorney's office is
investigating whether the student, Tyler Cross, was a victim of hazing.

The 18-year-old fell to his death from a fifth story
balcony last November at the University Towers dormitory. An autopsy later
showed cross was legally intoxicated at the time.

A search warrant, filed by the county attorney's office and
seeking information from Google, Inc, tells what happened before he died.

Investigators are gathering information that was shared
online by members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fall 2006 pledge class at UT, of
which Cross was a member.

In the affidavit, we learned pledge members told
investigators they were assaulted by active members of the fraternity -- beaten
with bamboo sticks and pieces of wood and forced to commit acts of theft.

These men also said the night Cross died he was assaulted,
cattle-prodded and became very intoxicated due to the alcohol the active members
supplied to him.

Investigators retrieved hundreds of pages of content from a
Google Groups Web site set up by the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fall 2006 pledge class

One member said pledges were told the "two most important
rules for pledging were: "Don't talk about pledgeship" and "don't die."

"Witnesses are always very, very important to us," said
Robert Saenz, Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, in a previous interview with
KVUE News. "They're able to provide clues or facts for us about what happened or
transpired that evening to where we got to the point that there was a death or
an accident or seriously bodily injury."

The attorney's office, which is working with Austin police
and the TABC, is investigating whether charges of hazing and supplying alcohol
to a minor will be filed.

No one at the fraternity house on West Campus would speak
with KVUE News on camera. One person inside the house said the fraternity still
has an active status on campus.

As of now, no charges have been filed in this case.

Officials at the county attorney's office say they hope to
have this investigation wrapped up in the next month or so.

A University of Texas fraternity finds itself on the horns of a dilemma: Facing
disciplinary action on campus and facing criminal action downtown.

The Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity has been under close scrutiny after one of
their pledges, Tyler Cross, fell to his death last November. The coroner says
the 18-year-old was drunk at the time. While the Travis County Attorney conducts
an investigation into hazing by the frat, U-T's Don Hale says they have
concluded their inquiry.

The County Attorney is looking at Internet files purportedly showing SAE members
giving pledges booze and physically abusing them hours before Cross fell off his
fifth-floor balcony.

AUSTIN, Texas (KXAN) -- Stemming from a student's 2006 hazing death, an
agreement to reform a fraternity's pledge and initiation processes and social
events was reached with the University of Texas Tuesday.

Tyler Cross, 18, was a Sigma Alpha Epsilon pledge who fell five stories to
his death from a balcony at the University Towers Dormitory. Austin police
declared Cross' death an accident.

The agreement means some big changes will be coming to the fraternity and to
West Campus.

The university said the fraternity was already on probation for a prior
violation of hazing and alcohol use by minors during the pledging process at the
time of Cross' November 2006 death.

"I think they have to have some restrictions on it if kids are dying,
obviously, and they are sponsored organizations by the university," said student
Matt Hall. "Something needs to be done about it."

"They recognize they violated university policy regarding hazing and alcohol,
and they will start taking different actions corrective measures to prevent that
at all costs," Vice President for Student Affairs Juan Gonzalez.

Provisions under the agreement include:

Sigma Alpha Epsilon will be registered conditionally as a student
organization for the next five years.

All SAE members must attend a yearly class on hazing and alcohol
awareness.

The fraternity house is subject to unannounced police visits.

The fraternity must hire off-duty police officers as security guards for
parties.

Attendance to the fraternity's events will be limited to a pre-party
guest list.

The university said the agreement is the first of its kind.

"This provides us a model for conduct on the part of our student
organizations and Greek organizations," Gonzalez said.

Students said the agreement is more likely to get fraternity members to
follow the rules, rather than kick them off campus.

"It's going to happen regardless of whether they are on campus or off
campus," Hall said. "As long as they are on campus, the university has some way
of at least trying to regulate what goes on. It's been happening since my dad
was in a fraternity. I don't think it is going to change anytime soon."

Allegations center around fall semester, when pledge Tyler
Cross fell to his death from balcony.

Accused of a variety of abusive behaviors — including shocking prospective
fraternity members with an electric cattle prod and burning the pledges with a
hot clothes iron — three former members of a University of Texas fraternity were
charged with misdemeanor hazing Friday, according to court documents.

The former members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon's UT chapter also face charges of
furnishing alcohol to a minor, the first time that Travis County Attorney David
Escamilla's office has levied that charge in a hazing case, Escamilla said. A
fourth former member of the fraternity was charged with failure to report
hazing, also marking the first time the office has pursued that charge,
Escamilla said.

The charges stem from an investigation into the fraternity's activities
during the 2006 semester when pledge Tyler Cross, 18, fell to his death off the
balcony of an off-campus dormitory. The teen's death sparked the investigation,
but none of the charges is directly related to his death. Claire Dawson-Brown, a
Travis County assistant district attorney, said a joint investigation into
potential felony crimes in Cross' death was conducted in conjunction with
Escamilla's but uncovered no crimes.

Charged with hazing and furnishing alcohol to minors are: Chase Bolding, 23,
who was fraternity president in 2006 and now lives in New York; Will Evans, 23,
who was a "pledge trainer" and now attends the University of St. Thomas in
Houston; and Austin Sherrill, 23, also a former pledge trainer and UT student.
Furnishing alcohol to a minor is punishable by up to a year in jail and hazing
by up to six months. Former Vice President Jimmy Berry, 23, was charged with
failure to report hazing, which is punishable by up to six months in jail. He is
now living in New York, Escamilla said.

Escamilla said the charges are "raising the ante against hazing." He said the
cases are set for pleas Monday but declined to comment any potential plea
agreements. Last year, three officers of UT's Lambda Phi Epsilon received
probation after an investigation into the death of Phanta "Jack" Phoummarath, a
freshman honors student from Houston who was found dead after an off-campus
fraternity party Dec. 9, 2005.

Berry's lawyer, Allan Williams, said his client's involvement was minimal and
he will receive a sentence of one year deferred adjudication, a form of
probation.

Bolding's lawyer, Wayne Meissner, said his client is going to enter a plea
Monday to accept responsibility for his actions but wouldn't say what the
sentence is.

Meissner defended the conduct of the fraternity members as "part of the rite
of passage of going to college" and said that none of the pledges complained
about the hazing.

Lawyers for the other men could not be reached for comment.

The charges came just more than a week after the fraternity struck an
agreement with UT that allows it to continue operating in exchange for changes
to the process of initiating new members and conducting social activities.

According to affidavits filed by a county attorney's investigator, the hazing
included an incident on Sept. 9, 2006, following UT's football game with Ohio
State University, when the pledges were gathered in a University Towers dorm
room.

Bolding, the president at the time, required a pledge to hold himself on a
table on his elbows and toes, a position referred to as "bows and toes," and
then turned the table over, sending the pledge falling to the floor, the
affidavits said. Also during that meeting, Sherrill touched a hot clothes iron
to the face of two pledges, causing minor injuries, and Evans made a pledge put
his hand on a dart board while Evans threw darts at it, the affidavits said. The
pledges were told not to go to class until the burns healed, they said.

At one event, the pledges were taken to a ranch and made to gather cacti with
their bare hands, the affidavit said. There, Evans made three pledges eat Crisco
shortening, made two eat cat food, made one pledge sit on a cactus and shocked
several pledges with a cattle prod, the affidavit said.

Later in the semester, the fraternity held what members referred to as
"jungle week" leading up to an annual party, the affidavit said.

One day, the pledges were required to carry large rocks across the fraternity
house yard while members struck their backs and legs with bamboo sticks, the
affidavit said. Some were shocked with an electric cattle prod, the affidavit
said.

On Nov. 16, 2006, the end of jungle week and the night before Cross died,
nine pledges were selected to participate in an activity called "Senior Boo"
that began with the pledges being shocked with a cattle prod, the affidavit
said. Later, the pledges, who were all under the legal drinking age, were given
half-gallon sized bottles of tequila, whiskey and Rumplemintz liquor and
encouraged to drink excessive amounts, according to the affidavit.

Bolding again made a pledge get into the "bows and toes" position and then
kicked the pledge in the stomach, a blow described as a "field goal kick," the
affidavit said.

About 4 a.m. Nov. 17, 2006, a person walking his dog found Cross, a freshman
from Marietta, Ga., dead on the front sidewalk of University Towers, police
said. He had fallen from a fifth-floor balcony, and an autopsy report said Cross
had a blood alcohol level of more than twice the legal limit for driving in
Texas.

A state judge in Texas has ordered a University of Texas at Austin fraternity
chapter and its national parent organization to pay $16.2-million to the parents
of a freshman pledge who died after falling, drunk, from his fifth-floor balcony
two years ago, the Austin American-Statesman reported today.

Investigators said Tyler Cross’s death, at his off-campus apartment, followed
a night of hazing by members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. In one of the rituals,
pledges were reportedly given half-gallon bottles of hard liquor to drink. The
authorities said pledges were also beaten with sticks and paddles.

Mr. Cross’s parents sued the fraternity in September. When neither the local
nor the national group responded to the lawsuit, John Dietz, a district judge,
issued the $16.2-million default judgment, according to Robbie Alden, a lawyer
for the family. He said state law allowed the fraternity to seek a new trial if
it could explain its failure to respond initially.

Representatives of the fraternity either did not return calls from the
newspaper or could not be reached for comment. Four fraternity leaders pleaded
no contest this year to charges in connection with the case and were sentenced
to either four days in jail or deferred adjudication. —Katherine Mangan

Nov. 26, 2008, 11:29PM

AUSTIN — A state district judge has reversed a $16.2 million judgment against
a fraternity sued by the parents of a pledge who died in an alleged
alcohol-related hazing incident at the University of Texas.

District Judge John Dietz ordered a new trial in the case against the UT
chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon and the fraternity's Evanston, Ill.-based
national organization, the Austin American-Statesman reported in its online
edition Wednesday.

The parents of freshman Tyler Cross sued Sigma Alpha Epsilon after their son
fell from the fifth floor of his off-campus dormitory in November 2006.

Dietz issued the judgment against the fraternity after the national and local
branches of the organization failed to respond to the lawsuit.

"The case will now proceed as if the judgment had not been entered, and the
defendants will have their day in court to prove that Tyler Cross' death was an
unfortunate accident," Ewbank said in the statement.

Investigators said Cross and other pledges were given half-gallon bottles of
liquor to drink. An autopsy showed Cross had a blood alcohol level of more than
twice the legal limit of .08.

Following Cross' death, two former pledge trainers pleaded no contest to
hazing and furnishing alcohol to minors.

Both were sentenced to four days in jail and given two years of deferred
adjudication.